


nobody caught you, your neck broke

by cryptidhearted



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Arson, Body Horror, Child Neglect, Implied Eye Trauma, M/M, Suicide Attempt, Unreliable Narrator, tim's shitty childhood in a mental hospital
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2020-09-18 20:09:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20318791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cryptidhearted/pseuds/cryptidhearted
Summary: He remembers turning seven staring at the clock and the monster behind it and feeling spindly fingers caressing the side of his face and remembers the dark. They were scared he was going to hurt himself. He doesn’t blame them. He doesn’t blame them taking away his toys, either, because that’s when it got worse.When he got worse.Rosswood Psychiatric Home.He doesn’t blame them. They were trying to help him. They were doing the best they could with a little boy who saw something that none of them could understand and who had tried to attack them before and who was getting worse and worse and worse. Steel wool on the inside of his skull, scraping away whatever viscera is left to polish it up and make room for further notations when the thing decides to examine it again to compare notes past development. He remembers the night nurse being so gentle when he was half conscious, wiping away the drool on his chin and petting his hair as she adjusted his pillows and ignoring the thing that was standing right behind her. She coughed on her way out, covered her mouth politely. It’s just that that’s when he got worse and they didn’t have a choice. They were trying to help him.He understands.





	nobody caught you, your neck broke

**Author's Note:**

> alternate title: sometimes? people set fires in the midst of their childhood trauma? to cope?
> 
> this fic contains some body horror/eye trauma, child neglect relating to a psychiatric hospital, an unreliable narrator, and a suicide attempt by way of arson. please tread carefully.
> 
> [find me on tumblr!](https://cryptidhearted.tumblr.com/)

As he comes to, he is driving.

The steering wheel feels cold under his hands, or maybe it’s simply him and the interior of the vehicle, because his breath mists in front of his face. The open road is in front of him, lit by his headlights on their lowest setting and the trees are spindly fingers and hands reaching for him, brushing the side of the car, leaving streaks in his windows and he is

he is.

Tim’s vision is unfocused and his chest feels heavy, weighted down into the seat. The windows are open. He pictures the spindly fingers of the trees reaching into the car and striking him with heavy claws, grabbing onto him by fingers around the throat, squeezing and squeezing and squeezing and his vision goes dark again.

He feels his fingers closed around keys. Feels the metal digging into his flesh and breaking the skin and wonders in passing if shoving blood into the ignition of his car is gonna damage it. He can’t afford to replace it, but he guesses he’s just going to have to deal with that.

He hears nothing but his own breathing, the sound in his ears carried to him on waves of static, empty television noise that comes and goes. Crescendo and diminuendo.

Blood on his tongue. Smoke in his lungs. He had a cigarette between his teeth a while ago but he guesses he put it out and got rid of it around the same time he almost bit the tip of his tongue off.

Spindly fingers reaching in to grab him, sinking claws into his skull, wrapping around his brain to pull it delicately out, whole. Unspooling the grey matter, a surgeon’s scalpel sectioning off the pieces of his skull. Here is what controls the breathing. Here is what controls eating and drinking. Here’s what lights up when he jacks off. Here’s what governs decision making and critical thought, here’s memory sectioned by short term and long term, here’s that funny feeling in his head any time he makes eye contact with a pretty boy, here’s the feral instinct to survive overlapping the questionable certainty of humanity and morality, here’s the anchored-down balloons that make his body float away without his head and the rocks tied to his brain by the spinal cord that keeps his feet on the ground. Broken glass in bloody viscera.

His vision clears again and the road is the same, lit by dim headlights and the fog is spreading. It must be coming from his mouth, he thinks, his insides replaced by smoke and a fog machine, the windows rolled down so his car doesn’t fill with it and suffocate him as he breathes in and exhales mist.

Tim swipes his tongue across his teeth. They feel sharpened. Maybe he’d cut it on his canines instead of biting down too hard, wolf’s teeth fitting wrong cutting up the inside of his mouth.

He’s drooling, sort of.

His car jerks to a stop and he wakes up.

Or, maybe he’s going back to sleep.

The trees lining the empty road are still there, but they’ve opened themselves out, spread themselves across the grounds as his car stops in the parking lot and the lights of the building spill out the windows. Bars on some of them, he knows. Bisecting the bright with shadow and his chest hurts when he breathes in. Constriction. His lungs are full of something else. He can’t breathe out right.

His hands are trembling—

shaking—

convulsing—

He wrenches the keys out from the ignition and looks down at them. Spotless. Not a mark. He swipes his tongue across his teeth and feels nothing but flat molars, the tiniest of points on his canines. His mouth is dry. No taste of blood remains. His vision doubles and he feels drool dripping down his chin, feels himself panting for breath and clawing at—something—a wall, the floor, sinking his sharpened nails into the chest of another human being and wailing, wailing, wailing—

The car door slams shut behind him.

Tim blinks. He looks up at the setting sun behind the building and hears the wind rustle through the trees. The monster is here too, he thinks, where it always is in his periphery. He drops the keys onto the concrete. He drops the pill bottle in his other hand and hears it clatter away. He stumbles forward and almost bumps into his car as he walks forward towards the sidewalk, his back rigid and his breathing coming in slow, struggled chokes.

I don’t want to go, Ma, I want to stay with you. (They’ll look after you here, Timothy, I promise.) No, I don’t want to go. I want to go home. I want to go home, Ma. (You’ll be safe. I promise.) I want to go home, Ma! (Listen to me, Timothy, you can’t) You can’t make me! I won’t! (Don’t argue with me. I know what’s best for you.)

i won’t i won’t i won’t i won’t

The monster is here too, he thinks, where it always is in his periphery. The shadows of the building stretch into the forest and his mind conjures up gentle sounds of the playground in the courtyard, ecstatic screams and laughter and the sound of bare feet on linoleum. Leather shoes and heavy boots and spindly fingers wrapped around his throat and squeezing.

His eyes burn, too, and water, but it doesn’t feel like he’s crying. It feels like something’s stuck there, some sensation between his eye and the flesh of his eye socket. Something digging in and checking their notes as it opens up his head again to make sure his reaction matches what they wrote down and he tastes blood again. From the inside out, pulling open his eyelids with pins for the fastest way to the antiseptic stinking scrubbed-clean center of his skull. It would take his eyes too if it were possible, needles and pliers and tweezers and gentle fingers caressing the side of his cheek and

the automatic doors slide open.

“Timothy?” The receptionist is surprised to see him. Tim is just as surprised to see them.

“Hello,” He says, and his voice feels far away. His throat feels raspy. Rubbed raw. “I think I have an appointment.” The words slip past his tongue and into the open air and he breathes in nice and slow, struggling against the choking sensation in his chest and—and—

“Of course.” They say to him. “Doctor Miller is in her office, if you’d like to go?”

“I know where it is.”

“I can escort you, if—”

“It’s okay.”

_Rosswood Psychiatric Home._ He mouths the words as he places his hands in his pockets and feels his keys and his pills and his cigarettes and his lighter. _Rosswood Psychiatric Home._ Scenic and comfortable. Empty. Emptier. The receptionist says something else to him and he thinks it might be some sort of concern. Some warning, some sound of alarm ringing about the inside of his empty skull and he’s scared but he doesn’t know why.

His eyes keep burning and so does his throat now and he thinks he’s scared but he doesn’t know why.

Rosswood Psychiatric Home.

He kind of remembers turning seven. Two years in the hospital. His Ma still talked to him. The monster was still there, but it’d gotten worse by then, there every time he turned and every time he opened his eyes and behind anyone who spoke to him. They’d had to special order the cuffs to hold him down because he was too small for what they had and subsequently his thrashing was answered with what was probably too much sedatives for a child his age. He remembers turning seven staring at the clock and the monster behind it and feeling spindly fingers caressing the side of his face and remembers the dark. They were scared he was going to hurt himself. He doesn’t blame them. He doesn’t blame them taking away his toys, either, because that’s when it got worse.

When he got worse.

Rosswood Psychiatric Home.

He doesn’t blame them. They were trying to help him. They were doing the best they could with a little boy who saw something that none of them could understand and who had tried to attack them before and who was getting worse and worse and worse. Steel wool on the inside of his skull, scraping away whatever viscera is left to polish it up and make room for further notations when the thing decides to examine it again to compare notes past development. He remembers the night nurse being so gentle when he was half conscious, wiping away the drool on his chin and petting his hair as she adjusted his pillows and ignoring the thing that was standing right behind her. She coughed on her way out, covered her mouth politely. It’s just that that’s when he got worse and they didn’t have a choice. They were trying to help him.

He understands.

Tim’s footsteps echo on the empty hallways and he tries to remember what he might’ve heard. His social worker whose name won’t come to mind in the instant had told him the facility was probably on its way out, but that they’d been fortunate to come into a set of donations. It was going to be cleaned out and renovated and made a much better place to live. He hears a child’s footsteps running down the hall, hears someone calling after him and tightens his grip on the cigarettes in his pocket.

He really does understand. They didn’t know what was wrong with him. What was happening to him. He was too young to be able to articulate what he was seeing, too lost and confused and scared and sometimes he just wouldn’t talk at all. Sometimes he’d lash out. Slap, bite, kick, hit, snarl, snarl, snarl. Like an angry puppy at eight years old. Dehumanizing himself and seeing monsters and they didn’t know what to do. They didn’t know how to help him, so he doesn’t blame them.

He’s walked this way before, when he was smaller. The hallways seemed bigger. He usually had someone holding his hand. (He really, really doesn’t blame them. They were just doing their job. They had to.) He usually had an escort or supervision because they knew he was dangerous, even at nine years old, even at ten, eleven, twelve. He’d hurt somebody. He’d hurt himself. The monster is here too, he thinks, where it always is in his periphery.

Something crackles in his ears. Static. Empty noise. He’d left the radio in his car on. He breathes out and tastes smoke on his tongue and craves nicotine and thinks about how disappointed Doctor Miller and his social worker are going to be in him—What was their name again? He should know better. They cared about him enough to help him get into school. Found his scholarships. Got him his driver’s license. He has their number on speed dial and he can’t remember their face.

He knocks on the door.

Doctor Miller’s office is well-lit in the same way that the hallway here hadn’t been. A lot of the lights were off and most people aren’t here anymore, he thinks, moved somewhere else or checked out for good or had the fortune to have never been here in the first place. He’d hurt somebody. He’d hurt himself. His eyes and his throat sting and he doesn’t want to have his eyes open as his tongue scrapes across sharp teeth.

“It’s good to see you,” She says to him with a smile and Tim is sitting in the chair across the desk. His legs don’t dangle there anymore. His heavy boots are on the ground. His bare feet are pressed into the worn leather, his claws digging into the side of them. He smiles in return. Pictures it full of sharp teeth.

Ma, please, I wanna come home.

“Thanks for… letting me visit, I guess.” Tim replies with a hoarse laugh and a stifled cough as he picks at his worn-down nails. “I wanted to see it before it shut down.”

“We’re not shutting down, thankfully.” Doctor Miller replies with that same soft smile, her expression unreadable but Tim thinks it might be intended to be relief. Apology. Something he has no name for. Something he has no experience with. His eyes sting badly enough that he wants to close them but every bone in his body knows he shouldn’t. “Nobody’s living here right now, but we’re only closing our doors for a little while. We’re going to fix the place up and make it better for patients in the future.”

He remembers being thirteen years old and sitting in Doctor Miller’s office with her hands encompassing his and her kindly voice saying that he was imagining things, that there was nothing there and he would have to apologize for what he did, because he’d hurt somebody again. Violent delusions, they say behind his back, pretending he’s too young to hear them. Acting like he doesn’t understand a lot more about what’s happening to him than they do because they won’t listen to him or take him seriously and he’s tired, and scared, and just wants to be able to move.

Hayes, he remembers, suddenly. His social worker. Her last name is Hayes. She’d bought him a cake when he turned eighteen and also signed his discharge papers.

“I’m glad to hear it.” Tim lies through his teeth and smiles and smiles and smiles. Everything is fine, fine and dandy as he fidgets in his pocket with his pill bottle. “Do you mind if I go for a walk?”

“I wanted to hear how you were doing, actually.”

“I’m doing fine.”

“You look a little tired, Timothy, are you sure?”

“I’m doing fine,” he repeats, insists. “I’m seeing a therapist weekly. Do you want her number?”

“I want to hear it from you.”

I’ve said it twice, he thinks, and he thinks the monster is here, too, somewhere in his periphery.

“I’m doing fine.” He says again, and this time it satisfies her because he changes the way he’s sitting and gives the slightest smile and knows that Mrs. Hayes has probably talked to Doctor Miller lately because he hasn’t called in a little while but he has the law on his side and the most either of them can do is ask his beleaguered therapist if he’s checked in. He prefers it that way. They don’t need to know. “Can I go for a walk?” And he feels meek, childlike, thirteen years old and sitting in her office with his head in his hands because he hurt somebody and he feels terrible for it, terrible for it, terrible for it.

His head aches.

“Go ahead, Timothy. It was nice to see you again.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

He’s very polite. He pictures hopping off the chair, twelve and trembling and snot-nosed, stands straight and scratches at the back of his neck and tastes nicotine on his tongue. She says something else to him and he knows he answers in the affirmative but fuck if he knows what he said to her.

The conversation was longer. He said something else. Standing in her office. Curled under the floor in the maintenance tunnel and listening to footsteps run by and hearing his name being called in the dark. Echoes on the walls, on the inside of his skull. Barreling into another boy and making him fall because the floor had been cleaned lately and the sound of a loud thud and crying, crying, the sound of his own wailing voice as he clutches at the coat of the nice nurse who was very kind to him when he couldn’t be kind back and the screaming of the child who had been underneath him and is now in somebody else’s arms.

He was in trouble. That’s the only reason he talked to Doctor Miller, most of the time, because the nurses and the other doctors were more ready to face him. She wasn’t. He doesn’t blame her at all. It isn’t her fault. It has never been her fault, because she took this job to look after the people who needed it, and he was just one of the people who needed it. They were trying to help him.

Long fingers prying at his eyeballs and pinching the optic nerve. His vision goes black in one eye as his footsteps echo in the darkened hallway. He was one floor up. In the middle. The window was high up enough that he had to stand on a chair if he wanted to look out of it because he always was such a small child, and he didn’t feel very comfortable when any of the aides held him up to do it. They took the chair away at some point because he was either tall enough or they didn’t think he should have it and it might’ve been a combination of both but he can’t think straight enough to remember.

Pushing and pulling on the nerves in his eyes and he doesn’t need to see because he knows the way by heart. It happens, when you’re used to checking and making sure the door to your room isn’t locked anymore. Sometimes you peek out into the dark hallway and listen to the sounds of the others around you in their own little worlds and nightmares and you understand them, you know them, in your heart you know them because you’re suffering, too, but because you’re eleven years old and you’re very scared and you want to run away, you don’t help them.

It’s the not helping that he regrets the most, he thinks, as he fumbles blindly against the wall and feels for the railing that will help him climb the stairs. A part of him thinks maybe when he was ten and knew the dangerous thing was there, he tried to run away because it would help them. Or when he was nine and hit that girl for the first time because something in him thought she was _dangerous_ and he was scared and didn’t know what else to do, he knew he was the _dangerous_ thing and it’d be better if he moved on. If he left. If he went somewhere else. It was better for him to be away, far away and alone, wedged between broken wood or rusty pipes.

He started college four months ago and is very happy there and he’s fine.

Mrs. Hayes helped him move into his new apartment, helping him through the process of signing a lease and picking a major and doing more for him than he really deserves to. He’d driven himself to his classes and he’d—

he’d met a boy.

Two months in he’d met a boy who seemed to be the personification of all the foreign good things Tim has ever given any thought. He has a smile like sunlight and his brown hair is yellow in the sun to echo that smile and every time it’s directed at him his heart skips a beat. Two months in he’d met a boy who wasn’t scared of him and then three months in he’d kissed that boy and he’d cried, after, cried into his shoulder without being able to tell him why that mattered so much. Tim knows that he idolizes Brian. He loves him intensely, so intensely that his heart might burst for the amount trying to be held inside of it and he feels guilty, guilty, guilty, because he’s lying to him.

He’s not lying to him about anything that matters, but he’s so scared of losing him.

(Where are you from?) Rosswood. Grew up there. (Got any family?) Just me and my Ma. (How’re you doing?) Fine, thanks for asking. (I love you.) I love you, too, so much. (Do you need anything when I’m out?) Buy me a pack of cigarettes? I’ll pay you back. (Can I sleep over?) Please. (Does that feel good?) Yes. (Are you okay?) I’m fine. I love you. (I love you too.) Do you want to get dinner? (Let’s go. My treat.) I want to try this with you. (I’ll do it for you.) You’re my world and I love you. (I love you, too.)

He’s so scared of failing this. His knuckles are white as he clutches the railing to the stairs and as his other hand reaches into his pocket to feel for the lighter tucked in against his pills. He’s so scared of saying the wrong thing and revealing the broken glass and viscera that make up the inside of his skull because he knows that Brian can’t possibly feel the same way. He can’t possibly. Three months in he cried with his face in a pretty boy’s shoulder because he’d never been kissed before and it was so much better than he ever could’ve imagined it and he wanted to die in that moment, to lie down and die, because nothing would ever be better than that, either.

He remembers standing in this hallway, in the dark like tonight, too, listening to some romance movie playing on the night nurse’s station at sixteen and wondering what was wrong with him. Something had to be wrong with him because he never looked at girls the way they told him he should. There hadn’t been any boys he’d liked before then. After a while he’d settled on just thinking that he didn’t know what love felt like, and enough time being sick taught him he didn’t deserve it.

Brian is different. He is—beautiful, spun gold and pearls and sunlight, woven wicker intertwined with smooth marble, something so much greater and better and oh, oh, oh, Tim _loves _him. He’s so smart, smart as a whip, quicker to think and solve the problem than Tim has ever been and he knows Brian’s going to find out eventually. Brian’s so observant and careful and kind and studious and beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, and he’s going to find out eventually.

He’s looking for a wastebasket. He still can’t see, but he can picture Brian’s smile. A wastebasket and some papers because the fire alarms don’t work here and that’s why the second floor was always populated, in case something went wrong.

Nobody’s here now.

I love you. (I love you, too.) No, really, I love you. I need you to know that I love you. (I do. I love you too.) I’m sorry. (What for?) I just—I’m sorry. (You don’t have anything that you need to be sorry for.) You deserve better than me. (What?) You deserve better than me. I’m not—I’m not good enough for you. (Why are you talking like this?) I just need you to know. (You’re what I want.) I don’t think I’m what you deserve. (Doesn’t matter. You’re what I want. That’s all that matters.) I love you.

He’s so scared of saying the wrong thing and letting it all slip and losing him. Because Tim knows that Brian would not have said any of it back to him if he knew. If he knew how much of him was broken. If he knew that the monster in his periphery was there when they were together, those nights where Tim had to hide in his chest and apologize for coughing and swallow his pills when he got up to piss because he didn’t want Brian to see. Brian would not have kissed him first if Tim weren’t so good at manufacturing this lie, setting it up to make it so obvious that Tim Wright is just fine, really, and he’s a good choice.

His hands close around the wastebasket and he reaches in. Papers. Paper plates. He pictures birthday candles and a tiny cake that says _Happy Birthday Tim!_ and wonders if he ever actually got to eat it because he doesn’t remember anything after he blew out the candles.

His vision comes back and he is in the center of what had been his room and staring down at the trash in the basket, hunched over it with the lighter in one hand.

His eyes burn.

He got out and met the perfect boy and he’s happy, really, he’s happy and intact and doing fine and getting better and everything is really okay, everything is fine, he’s fine, he’s not crying into a basket full of paper and getting it wet with his tears because the guilt is crushing, the guilt is almost stronger than the fear and he wants to vomit but he got in trouble for vomiting into this kind of basket once because it doesn’t hold it.

But he’s not the only five year old little boy being abandoned by his mother and chased by a monster and treated kindly by people who don’t know how to take care of them and oh, he met the perfect boy, and his heart hurts, and his chest hurts, and he coughs and coughs. Spits blood and phlegm into the basket and stares down at what looks like black ink.

I’m gonna stay at my place tonight. (You sure?) Yeah. Don’t wanna impose. (You’re never imposing.) I’ll stay over the weekend? (Yeah. Of course.) I love you. (Love you, too. Drive safe. Text me when you get home?) I will.

He’s drooling and it’s blood and saliva dripping down his chin. His teeth are sharp and his whole body is trembling, convulsing, somewhere between cold and having a fucking seizure and his chest hurts. His eyes sting. He tastes smoke and nicotine and smoke and tar and ashes.

He would rather be at home. Tim would rather be at home, curled up in his apartment on his couch and listening to the tv play something he wanted to watch and pretend that he doesn’t feel the presence just behind him. Caressing his cheek. Stroking his hair. Wants to pretend that he doesn’t get antsy any time the doors and windows aren’t unlocked because he wants to be so sure can bolt at any given moment if he needs to. He wants to be in his bed with the door to the hallway open and his face nestled in a pillow and asleep, clutching his phone close to his face because Brian calls him early sometimes before his run and Tim doesn’t know how to ask him if he can come with.

He got out. He’s really happy. He met the perfect boy. He’s doing well in his classes and seeing his therapist weekly and he’s happy. The sun rises in the morning and he takes his medicine and drinks a whole bottle of water with breakfast that he makes himself and he walks out his front door and goes to class and he’s happy.

He’s happy, happy, happy.

He’s sobbing into a basket of trash, doubled over and clutching it and biting his tongue so he’s quiet. He can’t see. He feels tears running down his cheeks as he gags, sobs hard enough to almost make himself vomit and struggles to swallow it and—

why’d he come here, anyway? He hates this place. Feels angry and sorrowful every time he drives past Rosswood Park, let alone walking right up to the door of Rosswood Psychiatric Home. He knows why he came here, but why? Why bother? It’s all angry thoughts, empty delusions that he shouldn’t have and intrusive thoughts that aren’t real because the monster’s not real and the presence isn’t there and yet the monster is here, he thinks, where it always is in his periphery.

The lighter clicks. He swallows the broken glass in his head and lets it cut up his mouth and stomach instead.

On, off.

On, off.

On, off.

He drops the lighter into the basket of paper and it ignites in one glorious bright flash as he lets go of the basket and lets the hysterics he was _trying so hard_ to stave off snap his neck in one quick motion.

He doesn’t know what else he does. He knows that he lets the basket burns and it starts to melt the linoleum underneath it as everything else catches fire and he pulls the blanket off the bed to start the fire more intensely because he always hated that scratchy fucking thing and missed the blanket he’d left on his bed because his Ma hadn’t told him he wasn’t coming back.

The fire is between him and the door and the animal instinct in his head tells him he needs to go through it to get out and the fire will swallow the rest of the building but the thing in the doorway doesn’t let him. Because the monster is there, impossibly tall and with its head tilted slightly to the side, staring at him without eyes and with the notebook of details about the inside of his trash fucking brain tucked into its front coat pocket. He imagines, at least. Maybe it doesn’t need the notebook. Maybe its capable of remembering more than he is.

Tim is resting with his head against the wall, his knees pulled to his chest as the fire spreads from the wastebasket to the blanket to the empty bed and he wonders if another kid was put in here after he left. Some other little boy who just wanted to go home but saw things nobody else did and heard things nobody else understood and got good enough at pretending to say I’m fine, thank you, can I go for a walk? instead of screaming when they asked how he was.

You’ll be free, kiddo, he thinks. More than I was.

Realistically he knows that whoever was here and isn’t here now has been moved because the building is empty but for the receptionist and a doctor or two and whatever poor sap had the shitty job of making sure everything was packed up.

They’re gonna lose a lot of records. He should probably feel bad about that.

He doesn’t.

The fire begins to climb the wall and the thing is still staring at him and Tim thinks he should apologize to Brian because he didn’t really set out planning to kill himself tonight but it’s going to happen anyway. It won’t let him out of the room. Its standing in the doorway with its head tilted and staring down at him and the smoke is gathering. Tim reaches for the cigarettes in his pocket and does not blink as the thing continues to stare at him and wonders if it’s going to kill him before the fire does. How would it do it, anyway?

Cave his skull in, maybe. Turn up the volume on the static. Use those long arms to pull him into the fire and let him burn.

Tim reaches out to light his cigarette on the wastepaper basket and inhales the smoke.

Good riddance, he decides. He’s the dangerous thing. He’s the empty liar and he deserves the empty void that he guesses comes after he dies because he’s not fortunate enough to have earned paradise. When he’s dead it can dissect his head all it wants to, go on to pull him apart muscle by muscle and bone by bone and see if it really knows him as well as it thinks it does.

The cigarette hangs from between his teeth as he snarls at it.

It says nothing in reply.

He closes his eyes, because they’re stinging. He really should apologize to Brian. His phone’s still in the car. It’d be bad to call him now, though, because he can hear smoke alarms going off and shouting voices and he thinks somebody’s gonna know he did this but if they find his corpse in the rubble they won’t be able to identify it. Will they? He doesn’t know—he watched some true crime shows at some point but he doesn’t remember what burn victims look like. He could never stomach it, funnily enough.

He still feels its nonexistent eyes on him but that’s okay. He’ll stop being able to breathe soon enough and then he’ll go to sleep and that’s the end of it. No more monster. No more medicine and no more cigarettes, no more college and no more headaches and he’ll miss his pretty boy, but he’s done his best to love him still. That won’t stop when he’s dead. He’s decided that much.

He smiles to himself, feels his victory and

and

and

“Thank you, Anne. I’m coming to you live from Rosswood Park, just down the street from Rosswood Psychiatric Hospital. At around 9:30 last night an intruder broke in through a first-floor window, setting off security alarms and alerting police to their presence.”

Tim opens his eyes and stares up at the ceiling.

“It was discovered upon arrival that they had ascended to a room in the second floor and started a fire, using a trash basket and blanket as fuel. Thankfully no one was harmed, as the hospital has been closed for the past month to plan for renovations.”

His chest and eyes hurt, his whole body feeling heavy and nausea setting in strong. His hands are trembling.

“It appears to have been arson, but besides the broken window there is no evidence anyone was here.”

He’s lying on his couch in his living room with the tv tuned to the local news and feeling bile and drool gather in his mouth as the fan over top of him blows a gentle breeze on him. His car keys, pills, phone and cigarettes are on the coffee table in front of him when he glances over.

“Police are currently looking for a suspect, but it is theorized the alarm going off may have scared off any intruder, and that the fire was a coincidence, as a second source was discovered in the basement and the room in question had flammable material within reach due to being in the middle of renovations.”

He sits up, slowly, gingerly, listens to himself wheeze. His chest rattles. Smoke inhalation, he knows. He felt the same way after he had his first cigarette. It’s somehow worse, this time, and he knows why. He knows why.

“While they are not ruling out foul play, police have assured us that it is likely this was an accident, and reiterate that no one was harmed. The building is a loss, and it is unknown at this time what will be done in the aftermath.”

The tv shuts itself off when he reaches for the remote.


End file.
